The Antimilitarist Feminist Network: Addressing Mexico’s Security Failures

Abstract Despite adopting progressive policies and making significant progress in gender parity, Mexico faces important security challenges that undermine gender equality. Mexico's security policies, especially its military-based solutions, risk undoing the country's ambitious gender equality agenda. In response to increasing security failures and militarization, Mexican antimilitarist feminist activists have pushed back against the government with some success despite setbacks. But what are the underlying preconditions for the rise of antimilitarist feminists? And how are they organizing in response to increasing militarization? This paper begins by describing the context and recent history of militarization and antimilitarism in Mexico. Then it explores the underlying preconditions that enable the emergence of antimilitarist feminist mobilizations: feminist peace and security theorizing and political democratization and human rights frameworks. Drawing on semistructured interviews with feminist activists, it finds that the Antimilitarist Feminist Network has been pivotal in exposing Mexico's contradictions and failures regarding its policies on security and gender equality. The Antimilitarist Feminist Network (re)defines security and (re)imagines alternatives to militarization by promoting and demanding women's meaningful participation and feminist perspectives in security policymaking.